The Stand Comedy Club Podcast · The Stand

Mark Black

·1 hr 20 min·5 clips

The chat turns to Aunty Donna, a wig reveal, a spoon of cinnamon, and a condom through the nose.

The season-two opener starts with a bit of giddy self-awareness. The hosts are showing off the new cameras, the new venue on Great Western Road, and the fact that the podcast has finally moved on from the old phone setup. Mark Black comes in as the guest. The room already has background noise of its own, thanks to the neighbours upstairs restoring stained glass windows and occasionally playing loud jazz through the building. That nearby chaos becomes part of the atmosphere, because everyone can hear how close the venue feels to being interrupted by someone else’s soundtrack. The conversation then turns into a long, very comic drift through nights out, bad decisions, and the kind of local memory that comedians can keep opening up for ages without running out of material. A story about a boozy night lands hard, complete with 35 a gin, 35 a vodka, drinking the whole thing, losing each other for ten minutes, and both getting kicked out. The best detail is the route home, because a six-minute walk somehow becomes a two-and-a-half-hour journey after the night goes completely sideways. Life360 becomes part of the punchline machinery, since the next day the app shows the trip in a way that makes it even more ridiculous. From there the chat keeps moving between old club names, karaoke nights, and the strange fact of seeing Jason Manford singing at Planet. CC’s, Planet, Polo, and AXM all get dragged into the mix as shorthand for the sort of late-night circuit lore that only makes sense in the moment. The stories are messy, but they keep finding the funny edge in the mess. There’s also a bit about someone taking a flask of whiskey into a queue, going for a chippy before heading out, getting curry sauce on a blazer, and then trying to get in anyway. The bouncer sees through it. The episode also folds in a funeral story, where the alchies for the party end up continuing the night at AXM. Near the end, the plug comes in for Mark Black’s Armadillo show in May, plus his social accounts, with the usual comic complaint that self-promotion is annoying but necessary. There’s also a specific plea for cheese and onion crisps, which feels exactly in keeping with the episode’s appetite for daft, ordinary things. The whole thing stays warm, unruly, and very local. It sounds like comics talking in a room where interruptions are part of the fun, not a flaw to be edited out.

As heard by us

A loose club-room chat that turns nightclub chaos and small humiliations into easy laughs.

Season two starts on steady ground. Mark Black is back in a new Great Western Road venue, and the move from phones to 4K cameras gives the room a cleaner, broader feel.

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Why you'd press play

You want club-room chaos, venue chatter, and a guest who can keep the banter rolling.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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